


Circle of Death

by valafatoren



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Everyone is Dead, Gen, Gods, dark! AU if everyone in the circle died but theyre not really dead kind of a happy ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 19:24:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valafatoren/pseuds/valafatoren
Summary: The circle cannot be kept apart, even in death. Perhaps things didn't work out the way the gods wanted them to, but that doesn't mean the tale is over. A story told in four parts and one whole.





	1. Part One: The First To Go

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING. Please don’t read this fic if description about death, suicide, depression triggers you or makes you feel uncomfortable. Turn back unless you’re certain you can read this. Otherwise, continue on.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandry leads, even in death...

Sandry knows she is going to die. It’s been three weeks since she was locked in the dark storeroom and three hours since the light died out.

There was no sudden flicker, no sudden plunge into pitch black. Instead the darkness crept up on her, the light waning slowly like the way her body is fading into nothingness along with her sanity. She laughs hysterically, glugs the last of the water – a mere trickle – and throws it against the wall.

It smashes, the sound unnaturally loud in the still room and she curls over, moaning and blocking her ears. Sandry whimpers, clutching the plait she made, and frantically brushes at her bare skin in an attempt to wash away the rising darkness. It doesn’t leave.

She feels it climbing up her legs and arms, an infection soaked deep into her skin that doesn’t leave even when her body is sore and scabbed and screaming what she feels like must be a deep red of pain and blood. The darkness is climbing, climbing, reaching for the prize that she knows is her heart, erratically pounding and overwhelming her senses.  
Sandry sways, her head hits the floor, and she feels the darkness gleefully rush in. She closes her eyes. It makes no difference, and when she opens them again she’s not sure if they’re really open for she can see no difference in the encompassing black.

She’s not too sure what’s real and what’s not now.

She whimpers again, and grabs the basket of thread, upending it on top of her. She takes comfort in the familiar feel of silk as it entwines around her and her limbs relax into the cold stone.

The numbness spreads and Sandry lies still, sprawled on the floor, gasping breaths settling into small exhales and inhales as her rising chest slows. The darkness has spread now and she can feel it curled around her heart, a monster poised with its claws ready to kill.

“Light,” she whispers, throat hoarse in one final attempt. All around her body, wrapped up like a cocoon, the threads shine into a blazing light, filling the room with golden warmth. But the darkness has already consumed her and her lungs have already stopped.

_The plan is unravelling. Now the circle will never join. This piece is lost forever to the world of the living._


	2. Part two: The One to Join Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherever Sandry goes, Daja is never far behind...

At first the suraku is a blessing, a sign of hope and survival. As Daja eats the last of the food she knows it was sent to torture her. 

There is no sign of rescue, just endless blue, and she knows all the suraku did was prolong her death and make her suffer weeks of dehydration and starvation. She wishes she never had the virtue of patience, that she had just gulped it down and at least and enjoyed one final meal. But most of all she wishes she had never found it. Hope is so much easier to kill than a body. 

The empty box gleams at her and for the first time Daja realises gold is ugly. Gold cannot save her now. She cannot eat gold, cannot use it to sail her way to land. What use is it?  
She shoves the box off her raft and watches it bob up and down. Sink! She wants to scream at it. She doesn’t. Somehow the experience has sharpened her mind, made her more sensible and pragmatic. The calm of logical acceptance in the face of death. Or perhaps these thoughts are all just proof of her insanity. Daja pulls the suraku back onto the raft, and despairs not at the gauntness of her arms but the loss of her strength. She bites into her lip, drawing blood, and wonders how long she can last.

Daja glances up at the blue ocean that she once loved. Death is cruel to take the things that were once her lifeblood and turn them into things to be hated. She wants to the girl she once was, with the breeze and ocean spray on her face and a soft smile lighting up her features, a girl who is content and hardworking and at peace with the world.  
Instead she is hunched over, licking her dry lips and condemning the blue depths. The ocean took her family, and it will take her too. There aren’t many things Daja is certain of anymore, but she knows she does not want to die waiting on a piece of wood for birds to peck at. 

The ocean is impossibly deep and clear, and she can see her reflection forming and breaking as the water shifts. She leans over the side, and drapes one arm in the water, swishing it about. It is freezing to the touch, and revitalizes her body, washing away the heat. Her aching mind is soothed and she wonders what it would feel like to submerge her entire body. 

Both shocking and refreshing, Daja decides finally, the water biting but awakening for all her dulled nerves and senses. She leans over further until her nose is almost touching, and if she stuck out her tongue she could lap it up. She considers it for a moment, toying it around in her mind, and begins to wonder why she didn’t think of it earlier. She laughs, a hoarse laugh full of irony and acceptance of the cruel joke the world is playing on her. Daja is dying of lack of water, and yet is surrounded by it. 

Before she makes a choice, the water rises a little and splashes her face, jolting her and making her lose her precarious hold on the edge. Then Daja is falling forward, face first, tumbling a full circle into the water. She lands heavily, but the water cushions her and caresses her body, and then she is sinking. The water is just as she imagined and she feels alive and aware for one blissful moment. 

Daja opens her eyes underwater as she falls and sees a dark shadow in the distance. It could be a ship, in fact, she knows it is deep in her bones, but she is at peace and too far down to swim. 

_Another one, lost. Half the circle is missing. Oh, how death manages to ruin such perfectly laid out plans._


	3. Part Three: The Next To Follow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tris joins them...

Tris is furious, and when she’s furious, people tend to find out. Unpleasantly. _Unwanted, again. Unloved, again. Worthless, again._

She screams with rage, her body trembling, and she feels the ground tremble beneath her. _Earthquake._ The word is delicious on her lips. Tris breaths out and hears the wind tear trees apart. _Wind._

Her eyes are dark and stormy and Tris doesn’t have to look outside to know there is a storm coming. She roars and some deep, bitter, sadistic part of her enjoys the shouts of fear from the mages as they rush inside to the boom of thunder. _Thunder._ The word is full of anger and fighting back and she thinks it tastes salty, but that could just be her tears.

The first salt-laden drop hits the floors and the sky opens up and it begins to rain. Tris cries for the poor lost girl cast out of her family and she cries for what she is now, a creature of pent up bitterness and monstrous power. _Rain._ It falls down, washing everything away, and she feels ready to be reborn but she has one more thing to go.

She can feel the power thrumming inside of her, channelling along her limbs up to her head where she feels a faint buzz. Tris blinks and lightning races down, racing gorgeously in a deadly dance where it finally struck the tower at the top of the house. She feels the power race to the floor where it is sucked back into her body. She blinks again. _Lightning._ It continues to strike and she laughs, a short bark, at finally letting go.

_Earthquake. Wind. Thunder. Rain. Lightning._

The house is barraged, and Tris is smiling as it falls down on top of her.

_It’s hopeless now. There is only one piece still living and they’re just waiting for it to topple._


	4. Part Four: The Last Piece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the Circle goes Briar goes too...

The docks are just as awful - and somehow worse - than he thought. Briar trudges along, his walk immeasurably heavy compared to the fearless saunter it once was. Oh, to have that youthful arrogance – the carelessness that came with the thought nothing could happen to him. The invincibility of the young and free. He never wanted to learn the truth the hard way.

He continues hauling the boxes, and settles into a rhythm. He would have had large muscles if not for the lack of food, he reflects, and Briar allows himself a brief flicker of self-pity before shaking his head at the stupidity. Who was going to see him now?

It is repetitive and mind-numbing, but he refuses to let his brain relax. He knows there is no point fighting the labour physically, but his mind has never stopped looking for an escape since he arrived six months ago.

The weariness is sinking past his bones into his mind, and he fights to remain vigilant. He hears the guards say something, and is surprised when all of them rush away in one direction, the haphazardness leading for him to assume to an emergency.

He looks up and sees a pirate flag, and smiles grimly. Smashing one of the boxes, he grabs a nail and begins picking at his locks. His fingers are malnourished, and so his hand shakes and trembles, but it is a familiar rhythm and everything falls into place. Click after click, until the shackles fall off his other arm, and then legs, until at last he is free. Briar swivels is arms and wrists. It is an unfamiliar sensation, to be so light.

He moves to run, but then hesitates at the sight of the other slaves.

One of them smiles bitterly and whispers, “Run.”

He does.

He sprints down the alleyways, determined to keep moving even though exhaustion is threatening to overwhelm him. He hears a shout after him and curses the evident grey rag he wears.

Running straight into a courtyard, he stops suddenly to survey the carnage and bloodshed around him. The pirates have arrived and he can see soldiers frantically attempting to regain their lost control.

A pirate spots him and sneers, “aw, a little boy.”

Briar dodges to the side quickly, but as he rolls behind a wagon pain blooms in his chest and his head lolls to the floor.

Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba----

_The final piece is lost and it is as if the circle never existed at all, just a faint memory of a could-have been. In Winding Circle, Emelan, a crisp, black and silver-haired man clutches his head, swarmed by visions._


	5. The Whole: The Full Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Circle will always find each other...

At first it is just one God, alighting to the small storage room where the shell of who Sandry once was lies there. A second God, appearing to sit on a wooden raft that floats without meaning. The third in a broken house surrounded by carnage. The fourth, in a courtyard near the docks where pain and suffering can be tasted in the very air. And then all, every single God that was ever worshipped, ever prayed to, appearing on the ground, heads bowed, hands clasped.

A tinkle of laughter, a quick touch of comfort, and a small soft hand is guiding their chins up to look into a pair of cornflower blue eyes and then to gaze at the sky.

What is seen stops breaths. Four perfect stars, equally spaced, a circle of light that will never end. A circle that can’t be broken.

 _Perhaps it didn’t work out the way you wanted to._ The voice is warm and strong, the regularity of a hammer striking metal, an eternal flame loving and kind and loyal, _but it doesn’t mean it’s over._

 _Yes,_ adds another voice, the sting of lightning and the gruffness of nature, with an almost imperceptible caress of wind. The voice seems to add, almost wryly, _when they told me not to play with the gods, I never thought of worrying about the gods playing with me._

 _Oh, girls,_ another voice juts in, of nimble fingers and vitality, green life springing up in the hardest of places, _what we mean to say, is, you’re free to go. We can do as much damage up here as down there anyhow so you ain’t needed._

 _You’re free,_ a different voice repeats, a voice of hardy cloth protecting its wearer, the exuberance of a spindle gleefully spinning and the determination of a bandage to help. _You can finally rest now. It’s okay,_ she adds, _we’ll look after your world. I’ll be glad for this, job, it will certainly keep things interesting._

A chuckle of agreement. _No doubt about that,_ the voices chorus.

 _We’ll love them,_ the first warm voice says.

 _And of course we’ll meddle,_ laughs the male voice.

 _Oh yes,_ says the final with a hint of mischief, _meddling is a speciality of mine. T_ he star reaches out and gently moves a constellation over to next to her. It wakes up, wagging its tail, and looking up at her adoringly and she giggles, _now that will confuse some people._

The world is silent for a moment until one last voice gruffly says _, sleep well._

It’s one God at first, thanking them silently and closing their eyes to fade away. The rest soon follow, closing their eyes with sighs of relief, finally able to rest now that the burden is out of their hands. A few fade quickly, too exhausted to stay any longer. Some fade slowly, taking the time to grant a few final prayers or set off a few actions to make things interesting. But soon, all are gone and it is just the circle of stars shining in the air above.

The four smile at each other, and down below, in a land called Gyongxe, a man looks up and sees a new constellation over his head, brighter and more alive than any he has ever seen.

“Magic,” he whispers, and decides to build a new temple. In his mind, he can already see it, the circle of life.


End file.
